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He told The Chronicle at a recent residents’ consultation session at Elton: “There’s warm water everywhere and no-one has really looked into it. One of the things we would like to do is find out how warm the water is and when you take it out, how fast it gets warm again because this could actually be non-renewable, weirdly enough. You suck the heat out too fast, it’s gone, you’ve mined it, it’s mining heat.”

British Geological Survey (BGS) drop-in session held at Elton Community Centre.

BGS will shortly be seeking planning permission to drill 50 boreholes which would be monitored using sensitive equipment enabling scientists to study geology over time, with publicly accessible data revealed about how fluids and gas flow underground.

Ince Marshes has been chosen due to the richness of the geology but also because it has already been extensively mapped allowing experts to design the proposed underground observatory.

The ground water would be measured in terms of its temperature, how it moves up and down and its gas content.

Prof Stephenson say the north of England is heavily dependent on the aquiver under Ince Marshes yet when water is sucked out, ‘it’s not really known how fast it comes back’.

Professor Mike Stephenson, director of science and technology at the British Geological Survey, at Elton Community Centre.

Seismic information will also be gathered from the vibrations caused by the on site wind turbines to earthquakes both in the UK and from as far away as New Zealand.

Measuring ground water and seismic activity would be useful if the controversial shale gas extraction method known as fracking was ever approved in this area. But the BGS director insists fracking research was not at the centre of the thinking when the location was chosen.

“It would have been really stupid for us to build a whole programme around shale gas when we don’t know if it’s going to be approved,” he said.

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“We want to do lots of science here. I don’t deny it, if fracking happened we would be there to measure it and it would be interesting, but it would be accurately measured independently, openly and freely for everyone to see it like we did in Lancashire and we reported those earthquakes.”

And Prof Stephenson denies the centre’s role is to ‘sell’ fracking to the public as a safe energy source.

“I think we are likely to prove the opposite because as soon as you an earthquake, we will pick it up,” he told CheshireLive.

Frack Free Dee activists outside Elton Community Centre when energy firm IGas carried out a consultation about its plans for a temporary well off Grinsome Road, Elton.

When it comes to other possible research avenues, nothing appear to be set in stone.

Other options could include investigating whether excess power created by the wind turbines can be stored underground as compressed air then released at periods of high demand to generate electricity.

As on the surface, ground water moves with the tides created by the gravitational pull of the moon. One question is can this movement be harnessed to generate power?

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Another research area could investigate the impact of rising sea level rises on agriculture as salt water moves further inland. Electrodes in the ground can help build up a 3-D underground picture of what is happening.

Carbon capture – storing CO2 in rocks under the ground to prevent climate change – is another possibility outlined in the BGS literature but Prof Stephenson now says it’s unlikely this could be done at any scale at Ince Marshes.

The feasibility of storing waste heat from power stations in the sandstone beneath is another area that could be explored.